FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT REPEAL - PAGE 5

By David Morgan WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law on Thursday in a symbolic move aimed as much at healing internal Republican rifts as demonstrating dogged party opposition to "Obamacare. " The 229-195 vote occurred largely along party lines and marked the 37th time the House has voted to repeal or defund the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is now in the final months before full implementation on Jan. 1. Like previous attempts to dismantle the law, the measure will likely go nowhere in the Democratic-run Senate.

The Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday repealed science guidelines that questioned evolution. The new guidelines reflect mainstream scientific views of evolution and represent a political defeat for advocates of "intelligent design," who had helped write the standards that are being jettisoned. The intelligent design concept holds that life is so complex that it must have been created by a higher authority. The state has had five sets of standards in eight years, with anti- and pro-evolution versions, each reversed by the seesawing fortunes of socially conservative Republicans and a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans.

It is a rare lawmaker who'll admit that the world would be better off without a law that he or she sponsored. State Rep. Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) apparently is one of that breed. In 1990 Flowers sponsored a bill that made it illegal for students in Illinois' public schools to have cell phones. That was in those long-ago days when such phones were bulky, cumbersome and expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it was felt the only students who would have them would be drug dealers.

Divorcing state law from the agenda of conservative lawmakers, Gov. James Thompson Monday approved a repeal of the nation's only law requiring that couples be tested for AIDS before getting their marriage licenses. The repeal of the controversial, 21-month-old premarital testing law, which is effective immediately, also removes a longstanding requirement that prospective brides and grooms be checked for syphilis. Nearing completion on some 1,200 bills sent to his desk, Thompson also vetoed business-opposed legislation that would have required some employers to offer unpaid medical or family responsibility leaves of eight weeks to their workers.

A bill repealing an 18-month-old law requiring prospective newlyweds to take an AIDS test-an exam attacked by critics as costly and ineffective-was sent to Gov. James Thompson on Friday by the Senate. Senators voted 33-23 to approve the measure. Thompson has agreed to review the impact of the nation's only premarital testing law, but has not said whether he will sign its repeal. While voting to repeal one AIDS law, senators also returned to the House two bills that would allow prosecutors to seek virus testing of some sex-crime suspects and to make knowing and willful transmission of AIDS a felony.

The Illinois Supreme Court probably made the correct legal decision when it said home-rule municipalities must obey a state law that, in effect, mandates high union wages on all tax-supported projects. A bad law is the villain in this case, not the justices who barred the use of home-rule powers to override it. In the opinion he wrote for the majority, Justice Seymour Simon warned that home-rule cities could repeal child labor laws, mandate 12-hour workdays and transform themselves into cruel "feudal estates" if they are permitted to pay less than prevailing wages.

By Aileen Torres-Bennett KINGSTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Prince Jones says he will never go back to Jamaica, not even to visit. The 25-year-old, who is gay and uses a pseudonym to protect himself and his family, grew up in Kingston and recalls how he was repeatedly harassed over his sexuality before moving to the United States in 2012. The plight of gays in Jamaica has cast an ugly spotlight on the Caribbean island, famous for its beaches, speedy athletes and laid-back culture.

An ordinance to allow Highwood's aldermen and other officials to carry guns was wiped off the books Tuesday night, as Mayor Fidel Ghini and many residents wanted, but the aldermen did it in a way to show their independence from the mayor. Ghini had vetoed the ordinance at a raucous meeting Feb. 4. Tuesday's meeting was calmer, but it still drew 200 people to the Highwood Recreation Center. The aldermen announced at the outset that by consensus they were overriding Ghini's veto, thus enacting the ordinance into law. But then they voted 6-1 to repeal it. The only vote against repeal came from Ald. Joseph Obenberger, who had introduced the ordinance Jan. 21 and won passage of it the same night.

The Democrat-controlled state Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to repeal the 1913 law that Republican Gov. Mitt Romney is using to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts. The repeal was approved 28-3 as part of the Senate version of the state budget. For the law to be wiped from the books, the repeal would have to get through the far more conservative House and then survive a certain veto by Romney. The 91-year-old law bars non-residents from marrying in Massachusetts if the union would not be legal in their home state.